Applause vs UNGUESS
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Field by field
| Field | Applause | UNGUESS |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | Framingham, the USA | Milan, Italy |
| Delivery locations | the USA, Germany, Israel, Poland, India | Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK |
| Team size | 201-500 people | 51-200 people |
| Founded | 2007 | 2015 |
| Ownership | Subsidiary | Independent |
| Services | Manual testing, Test automation, Payment flow testing, Accessibility testing, Usability testing, Localization testing, Security testing, Mobile app testing, IoT and device testing, AR/VR testing | Manual testing, Compatibility testing, Test automation, Payment flow testing, Usability testing, Localization testing, Red teaming, Penetration testing, Accessibility testing |
| Industries | Automotive, Ecommerce, Media, Banking, Travel, Healthcare, Games, Telecom | Games, Ecommerce, Banking, Insurance, Travel, Energy and utilities, Healthcare, Media, Automotive |
| Frameworks | Not published | Not published |
| Engagement models | Crowdtesting, Managed testing service | Crowdtesting |
| Client stagespublished by one of the two | Enterprises | Not published |
| Certificates | No certificate confirmed by a register entry | ISO/IEC 27001register entryISO 9001register entry |
| Signs a BAA / GDPR DPA | Not confirmed / Not confirmed | Not confirmed / Yes |
| Published rates | Not published | Not published |
| Minimum project | Not published | Not published |
| Onboarding | Not published | Not published |
| Crowd tester pool | 1,500,000applause.com | 60,000softwaretestinghelp.com |
| Device lab | Not published | Not published |
Who each one fits
Applause suits a buyer shipping something people hold rather than open in a browser. Its published scope reaches into hardware-facing testing, the ground a connected-device or headset release has to cover, and a team running that kind of launch finds it already inside the practice instead of subcontracted around it. UNGUESS suits a buyer whose release is a regulated web or payment product, where the risk worth testing is intrusion rather than device behaviour: its scope reaches into offensive security work that sits outside what a crowd alone produces.
Ownership sits differently behind each name. Applause operates as a subsidiary inside a private equity portfolio, so a question about parent-company policy or long-term roadmap has a corporate layer above it to route to. UNGUESS remains independently owned, and that same question goes to its own leadership.
On a first call, ask who triages a crowd-reported defect before it reaches the buyer's own tracker, and who is accountable when a report turns out to be noise. That answer decides how much internal time a crowd engagement actually costs, and the catalog records nothing about it for either name.
A tag is attached when the company's published fields meet its condition, never by judgement. Both lists come from the same closed vocabulary, so a tag missing from one side means the condition was not met, not that nobody looked.
Applause
Applause meets no applicability condition in this catalog. That is a statement about what its published fields show, not about the company.
UNGUESS
UNGUESS meets no applicability condition in this catalog. That is a statement about what its published fields show, not about the company.
Both meet the conditions for Crowdtesting at scale, Nearshore for the EU, so those conditions do not separate them.
Where the data runs out
Completeness against the 14 fields of the comparison checklist is 71% for Applause and 79% for UNGUESS. A field is counted as filled when a source confirms it, so a gap means nobody published it.
Neither company has a value recorded for these fields: Frameworks, Published rates, Minimum project, Onboarding, Device lab. The table shows those rows empty rather than estimating them.
Field definitions and the completeness checklist are on the methodology page. The sources behind each field are listed on the Applause profile and the UNGUESS profile.
Questions
- Which of the two, UNGUESS or Applause, has a confirmed answer on signing a GDPR data processing addendum?
- UNGUESS's profile confirms it signs a GDPR data processing addendum. UNGUESS's profile carries no confirmed answer on signing a BAA, the document written for US health data rather than for EU personal data. Applause's profile carries no confirmed answer on either document, GDPR addendum or BAA. A confirmed GDPR addendum does not stand in for a BAA, since the two documents answer to separate regulatory regimes.
- A startup considering both Applause and UNGUESS wants evidence that either vendor has published experience with companies of that size. What does the client stages field on each profile actually confirm?
- Applause's profile names one client stage, enterprise, the only stage the catalog records for it. UNGUESS's profile names no client stage at all, so the field carries no confirmed answer on UNGUESS's side of that scale. No source names a startup or scaleup stage for Applause or for UNGUESS, so a startup gets no direct confirmation of fit from the client stages field. An empty field on UNGUESS's profile records a gap in what the catalog has confirmed, not a stated policy against smaller clients.
Published by QA RatingUpdated on September 6, 2026
Every fact about a company comes from a listed source. A field without a source stays empty. A certificate counts as confirmed only when a registry, certificate or auditor report backs it; a certificate the company only claims about itself is published separately, under that label. Vendors can request a correction at hello@qa-rating.com. A correction is applied when it comes with a public source.